As a Sparrow Alone
by death-in-the-orchard
Summary: Alucard during Abraham van Hellsing's time - a demon and a bird.


_Psalm 102:7_

"_I watch, and am as a sparrow alone upon the house top."_

*~*~::..+..::~*~*

It was on the roof of the Hellsing Manor that the creature was often perched, beneath rain or clouded skies, always dim and sometimes darker when the moon was cold to him and hid herself. The roof competed with the trees for height, just as it had ever since it'd first been raised. In the beginning, the trees had been cut and cleared and the roof had well exceeded their stature. But the mansion could not grow as the trees did, which was to their advantage. Now, with the night blessed by the good favor of the moon, the one whiter than the yellow full sphere above could watch the tops of the trees sway in their own patterns, moving with the wind as taught to them by the wise reeds who had long ago learned that the will of the wind could not be denied. Leaves quivered, some branches creaked, and the sky became lighter as the vampire remained. It was early dawn, gray before the sun's arrival.

From the swaying trees came the first tittering songs of birds - first one, alone it seemed, speaking to the vampire as its only companion. But then others, many unseen in the distant trees or in the garden below, joined in, their song a symphony, one that spoke to the breeze and to the rustling trees. All life was restless, waiting for the light that seemed postponed that morning.

The vampire left the roof and a pink streak ran across the horizon before the first golden rays basked the heads of the trees in light as they watched the star feverishly. Below on the ground, gray and untouched by the awakening sun, the vampire stood within the garden where closed flowers still slumbered. The object that kept the demon, now sheltered only by the greedy trees hording this early morning light, lay squirming on the ground.

It was a broken creature; broken, robbed of its nature and all but one of the blessings God had bestowed upon it. It still lived, but very soon - the death giving monster read in its fate - the bird would die beneath the heat of the sun or be crushed by the jaws of a hungry animal. So was the will of nature, like the wind and the trees. The wind is a force of the world while the trees are only a creation that lives in it. What nature desires, its tenants must submit.

Though, the demon that stood in the garden watching the broken sparrow, who had not given a song that day for the first time since its making…

Though, the black clad form with eyes that reflected the hellfire seen in its future looked down on the doomed creature…

Though, the one called Alucard had once been Vlad Tepes, a man, a mortal, now immortal, had denied the wind that had demanded his soul at death, all other creatures would perish. This pitiful sparrow which now pecked at a few sparse seeds caught between the stones with one leg broken and one torn away, both wings in tatters with a tail plucked bare in some violent manner, still trying to survive, would not be spared. The innocent sparrow would die at the feet of the damned if the vampire were to stand there through the day.

But the vampire did not stay, and soon the stone path through the garden was left bare.

*~*~::..+..::~*~*

A cloth nest formed within a box comforted the fragile bird which now pecked seeds from a mound near its head, close to a shallow dish of water the beaked dipped into and then revisited until the sparrow's thirst was quenched. Alucard, with watchful eyes, stood in his dungeon where on the stones, visible through candlelight, sat the box and the sparrow in it. The candle, a stick and a small flame surrounded by gloom, burned a short space from the bird so that it might not be consumed by the darkness.

The vampire no longer stood or watched the bird, shut away in its coffin.

*~*~::..+..::~*~*

The moon, white that night and accompanied by clouds in the sky, hung overhead, and the coffin creaked open. The vampire on the stones of the dungeon floor, was in complete darkness only the eyes of the damned could pierce. The candle had burned away its wick, extinguished and reduced to a cold, melted ruin of white wax. Within the box, lying in its nest beside the seeds and the dish that still offered it water, the bird did not move. It did not squirm.

It did not breathe.

And the demon gazed upon it, a face unchanged. Soon these stones were also left bare.

*~*~::..+..::~*~*

Out in the garden among the flowers, earth was disturbed, shoveled out by one scoop of a gloved hand. A man walked the stone path that brought him to the demon. Behind Alucard, he saw the broken bird that lay in its grave.

Then, the world embraced its creation.

The demon that knelt in a bed of flowers, now a grave for the sparrow, had one white glove brightened by the moon and one glove darkened by the earth. Alucard rose, black hair flowing with the desire of the wind as petals fluttered like wings rooted to the ground. As the vampire walked away in silence, the man who stood in front of the flowers fated to fade and the grass that would wither with the approaching winter, spoke:

"'As the sparrow in her wandering, as the swallow in her flying, so the curse that is causeless alighteth not.'"

The demon's steps did not end.

*~*~::..+..::~*~*

Proverbs 26:2


End file.
